Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

One big part of the problem is that we're looking at this differently. You're saying (I think) that this plan makes the EC unnecessary... and I'm saying YES! Exactly!

Though maybe your point is (or maybe mine should be) what the EC did was make the Senate (all states equal!) and the House (by population) different and did so for a reason. Equal representation in both hurts the less populated states. Something like 20 Senators used to represent the area covered by the three states I mentioned.

To be clear this last bit is a reason I think we should try to go back to the old ways, not having states redrawn every decade, etc. Identity isn't what it used to be; I have little nostalgia left from living in the Firelands and traveling to Menominee to visit the grandparents.

Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

Right. The whole point is that the guy doesn't appear to understand the electoral college if he thinks it makes any sense preserving it with every state being the exact same size.
In fact the whole idea of periodically redrawing borders to keep states equally populated effectively makes the idea of states worthless in general. The whole concept if flawed (aside from the fact that it's an infeasible toy notion in the first place*).

It's a good thing that it's inevitable that states wind up different sizes because it's better that way. And it's probably in everyone's best interest that the whole country doesn't wind up being run entirely by NY and CA. People are dumb and don't give a fuck about places where they don't live.

Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

There have been rumors about him, mostly stoked on by conservatives, that he's gay because he's not married and I guess because he dresses nicely. Or something. Booker has said he's not gay for years. When the matter was brought up again by the Republicans this summer, Booker said "what would it matter if I am?" and noted that he had already clarified the record on the matter, and that it was a distraction from the issues he was running on. This led to further speculation that he is gay, even though he's said several times in the past that he's not.

Rachel Maddow -- who is a close personal friend -- said on the air Tuesday night that he's not gay.

Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

A colleague, a very good friend of mine but whacked in the head politically, included me in a blast email he sent that essentially contained the same stuff as in the blog post: http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2011...idnt-show-you/ . Except the subject line on the email was "Shame on ESPN" and included "Lambeau Field. This is what ESPN failed to show you Monday(9/16/13) night, Apparently, they thought their commercials were more important than showing this scene for about 5 seconds."

to which I replied,

"There is no shame in making money honestly. The tea party and other similar groups seem to think it is a national duty that everyone share in their obsessive fetishizing of the US military. It is not. Shame on the tea party and their proto-fascist beliefs.

Otherwise, how are you Jim? Ha ha."

I'm winning all sorts of friends today.

edit: also, fwiw, MNF football on 9/16/13 was Pittsburgh at Cincinnati. the pictures of Lambeau are from two years ago.

Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

“What we are going to do from here forward, if it will make people leave me the hell alone, is we’re going to do them like college papers,” he said. “We’re going to try to put out footnotes. We’re going to have them available. If people want to request the footnoted version, we’re going to have it available.”

and

“I think I’m being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters,” he said.

Yes, the unfair standard of not claiming the work of others without proper attribution. As applied to someone who wants to run for president of the United States.

Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

Yeah it's pretty fucking great. At the very least he's claiming that he and his entire staff have the intellectual maturity of college freshman.

His office claims that:

the thousands of speeches and op-eds Senator Paul has produced, he has always presented his own ideas, opinions and conclusions.

And then Paul admits that he's far too busy to even verify whose ideas he's presenting to the country:

Things are done quickly and in a hurry, and sometimes I get some things sent to me while giving a speech — I’m looking down at my phone saying ‘read this for approval in 20 minutes,'” he said. “We write something every week for The Washington Times, and I literally am riding around in a car in between things trying to figure out if I can approve it.

Re: Fuck the Republican Party.

He completed Opthalmology school at some point in his life. But calling him a doctor now would be a stretch. He couldn't get licensed by the American Board of Ophthalmology, so he invented his own optometry licensing board and licensed himself. Seriously.